Artist's Statement: Still Life.

Abstract

I always liked strawberries in pastries, in jam, or diced with mint and mixed with sparkling lemonade. Grapefruit was another favorite, topped with brown sugar and baked in halves in my third-floor apartment. Familiar and comforting, what they represented evolved with my medical training. Strawberries evoked a characteristic oral finding—swollen, hot, and alarming. Grapefruits were a stand-in for patient deltoids during vaccination training, where I learned what happens if I try to remove a needle cap like a marker. Medical education presented different contexts to ordinary objects. Safety pins became tools in the neurological exam; white vinegar became a treatment for otitis externa; bananas became models for suturing practice. I cannot forget the resemblance of strawberry to tongue nor grapefruit to shoulders on my weekly stroll down the grocery aisles. A still life presents a motionless arrangement of objects, usually fruit, flowers, fabric, and glassware. My digital artwork Still Life, on the cover of this issue, reflects the piecewise integration of specialized objects with the everyday—medical equipment interspersed with fruit. The composition invites the viewer to consider the relationships of the subjects. The soft, diffuse style highlights the ambiguity in knowledge acquisition and development, and allows the bright fruits to stand out against the blue-dominant medical equipment. In composing this still life, I could quietly step back, consider these juxtapositions with newfound curiosity, and get to know them again.Still Life